1512: Martin Luther, who dropped out of law school to become a monk, joins the theology faculty at the University of Wittenberg.

1824: The modern concrete age is born as British bricklayer Joseph Aspdin patents a new building material he calls "Portland cement."

1833: Alfred Nobel, the man who will invent dynamite, is born at Stockholm, Sweden, the son of the man who invented plywood.

1877: After $40,000 and 1,200 experiments, a piece of carbonized thread in a glass globe glows for 13 hours -- giving Thomas Edison the breakthrough he's looking for in his electric light.

1945: French women get the vote for the first time.

1959: Solomon R. Guggenheim's new Museum of Non-Objective Painting opens in a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The only problem with the museum is that it's impossible to hang the works of art correctly on the concave walls in its narrow, curved, shadowed spiral hallways.

1997: In only 37 days, Elton John's tribute to Princess Diana, Candle in the Wind 1997, sells 30.8 million copies to officially passes Bing Crosby's White Christmas and become the biggest-selling single of all time.